


Room in This House

by fluffernutter8



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Kid Fic, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27339745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: Years after the destruction of Sunnydale, Buffy comes to stay in Los Angeles. One of the Hyperion's residents isn't particularly happy about it.
Relationships: Angel (BtVS) & Connor (AtS), Angel/Buffy Summers, Buffy Summers & Connor (AtS), Buffy Summers & Fang Gang (AtS)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 42
Collections: I Will Remember You





	Room in This House

Connor is six before Buffy actually meets him in person.

She knows _about_ him, obviously, is aware of more little details than she even realizes most of the time. She and Angel have been talking on the phone for years, starting around the time Angel would be sitting up with the baby at all hours and she was trying to find her way back to herself and needed the reminder of who that was, and that even after so much time and so many terrible things you could still take joy in something new. Since they’d begun, she’s listened to Angel tell stories about Connor’s terrible twos, repeat with affection heavy in his voice nonsensical little jokes that Connor had invented, recount the big first day of kindergarten (someone cried in the lobby of the Hyperion, and it wasn’t the five year old).

But it’s not until Buffy, overheated and still sweltering in her tank top and little shorts as she sits out on her balcony in Osaka, mentions that she’s pretty much done with travelling the world considering that she’s seen nearly all of it at this point, and is thinking about heading back stateside that she's faced with the fact that not only is Connor a real person, but that she might actually meet him.

“I’ve been remembering home lately,” she says, not just for something to say but because she has been. “There might be exactly no wonders of the world there, but I keep thinking about palm trees and earthquakes, the mall. I’m a California girl, I can’t help it.”

He seems to wait for a moment before he replies. “Well, if you wanted someplace to stay when you got here, I can think of a good hotel.”

“If that’s an Eagles reference, you’re officially becoming too much of a dad.” She laughs, but he is still quiet, and it registers what he'd actually said.

“Oh.” She lets her feet fall from where she’d propped them on the balcony railing. Her hand tucks the phone closer to her cheek. “Um. Did you...Was that just a friend offer? I need a place, you’ve got a place? A huge place where we might never even run into each other, you can basically do your own thing, maybe you’ll find a Cosmo in the recycling once in a while and remember I’m there...Is that what you meant?”

The moment holds. She tries to remember those calming meditation breathing techniques that Giles used to try with her, but she can barely remember what air is at the moment.

“No,” he finally says, gentle and simple, because for all the time she’s spent confused by Angel and his words, his signals and silences, he really has no game when it comes down to it. “That’s not what I meant at all.”

And she knows it really is time to come home, and she doesn’t think she only means California.

* * *

She pulls up in a cab just after sunset. Angel is waiting for her right inside the gate. The little boy whose hand he holds squints at her as if everything she’s doing - paying the driver, picking up her bags, closing the taxi door - is being scrutinized for recording and judging later, possibly with a voodoo doll now that he knows what she looks like.

But when she’s standing in front of Angel, close enough to touch him for the first time in years, it doesn’t matter.

“Buffy,” he says. No one has ever said her name the way he does, as if he’s trying to do it like everyone else but it still comes out with a bit of wonder.

“Hi,” she says, feeling strangely shy. She sets down her suitcase, sturdy if showing the wear of four years of near constant travel with intermissions for the far more occasional these days apocalypse, and reaches for his hand. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too,” he says, and then they’re quiet. His eyes are warm as always. His mouth tilts upward the same way. She hadn’t realized she would remember it all in such detail.

“Dad.”

The voice might be small, but it is still sharp. It’s bordering on rude, actually, even for a little kid, but who knows how long they might have been staring at each other if they hadn’t been interrupted. Maybe Connor just catches on quick.

“Right. Sorry.” Angel releases Buffy’s hand to put an arm around Connor’s shoulders. “Connor, this is Buffy.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Buffy says, purposefully cheerful even as she tries to remember the right way to greet a first grader. Are high fives still a thing, or is he going to ‘too slow’ her? Last year she had three coincidental run-ins with millionaires and/or minor royalty, one of which started with her having run over a favorite dog (or cat? She was never entirely sure) and she’d felt less awkward about that. But by the time she’s narrowed it down to a wave or a handshake, Connor has looked her over and turned back to Angel.

“Cordy said she’d play on the Wii with me,” he states, in a way that makes Buffy want to double check to make sure she hasn’t turned invisible in the past two seconds. “I’m going to go inside so we can play before it’s bedtime.”

Angel gives his shoulder a squeeze. “Okay, but make sure to be careful with the controllers. Last time you didn’t put on the wristband and you nearly knocked out Gunn.”

“I already said—”

“I know you already said sorry, I’m just reminding you for this time.”

“Okay,” Connor shrugs, and turns to let himself in through the Hyperion’s heavy front door. In the moment before he disappears, he gives Buffy one last narrow-eyed, studied glance. 

“Are you sure he’s six?” asks Buffy after he’s gone.

Angel laughs, reaching over to pick up her suitcase. “Unless he aged rapidly while my back was turned, but I think I’d notice. And he’d probably be taller. Why?”

“Usually attitude like that comes with an age that ends in -teen,” Buffy says, raising her eyebrows, trying to sound like she’s joking as Angel holds the door open for her. 

He looks thoughtful for a minute. They stand close together, framed in the doorway. “He knows who you are, of course, and I told him that you mean a lot to me and that you’d be coming to stay, but it’s a big change and I don’t think he entirely knows how to handle it yet.” He shifts backward a little, into the shadows, so it’s difficult for her to see his face, though his tone stays light. “I thought that you’d understand that, actually.”

And in some ways Buffy does. The part of her that squished up in disgust and discomfort and distress every time her mother even mentioned the idea of dating, the part that got defensive over every compliment Giles gave Kendra and hated that he had things in common with Faith - those parts get it. Connor’s had Angel to himself for his entire life. He has a whole other family raising him: Wesley and Cordelia, Fred, Gunn, that green guy with the suits...Buffy knows how she would feel, how she _felt_ , about someone trying to elbow into that. 

It doesn’t mean the sub-arctic shoulder feels good, though.

* * *

Also, not incidentally, the amount she hates that Connor loves Cordy when he doesn’t even _like_ her? Incalculable, and that’s even if she was better at math.

* * *

She thinks she might be making progress when Connor talks to her for the first time, about a week later. He’s basically pretended she doesn’t exist when their paths have crossed so far, so she’s pretty surprised when he comes up to her as she’s getting ready to go out for a quick solo patrol one night and says, “Can I come and watch? I've gone with my dad a lot of times, but I want to see how you do it.”

He pretends not to be, but Buffy can tell he’s impressed. And hey, so what if she’s using her fanciest tricks on vamps fresh out of the grave? Sometimes the newbies can be surprisingly tricky, and she’s an equal opportunity slayer when it comes down to it.

Connor actually smiles at her as they walk back. He tells her it was “cool,” and the glow of being liked, or at least liked-ish, lasts all the way until they get in sight of the hotel and find Angel standing on the sidewalk with hands on tense hips. His expression is somehow familiar, but Buffy can’t remember when she’s seen him look like that. Then she realizes that it’s the look she saw on her mother’s face the day she’d left the house without asking to buy a strawberry shortcake from the ice cream truck with her allowance.

“Patrolling is not actually a Connor-friendly activity, is it?” she asks as they reach Angel.

Angel responds tightly, “No, it is not,” and he makes Connor apologize for lying to her before he leads him inside by the shoulders.

The following day, Connor has once again stopped so much as looking at her at the breakfast table, even though they’re the only two there. Buffy isn’t sure whether he’s newly angry because she didn’t stand up to his dad for him, or if he’d only been pretending to like her for just that minute last night.

She decides not to care. She does the word search on the back of the Cocoa Pebbles and ignores him right back.

* * *

The strangest thing is that, overall, she feels like she already has a place at Angel Investigations. There’s every reason for her to feel like she doesn’t belong, and that’s even without considering her junior nemesis, but instead it feels...comfortable. Which is weird.

Maybe it’s easy because she has some pretty top-notch slaying expertise, especially now that she’s gone international, and they appreciate that sort of thing around here. They get sent on a case that ends up with her using one Venlor’s claw to kill the other and she thinks she might get a standing ovation from Fred at least, which is nice because she doesn’t even usually get a sitting ovation.

Maybe it works because Angel’s friends are nice (well, not Cordelia, but she’s mostly normal Cordy cutting, which is totally dealable). Maybe it’s because after years of regular phone calls with Angel she knows their histories and their quirks. She lets Fred set the land speed (air speed?) record for chatter as they make pancakes down in the Hyperion’s creepily huge kitchen. (Fred is mostly in charge of the actual pancakes, but Buffy could medal in the blueberry and chocolate chip categories for topping sprinkling.) The conversation she and Gunn fall into about various types of weapons stretches into favorite improvised one, then favorite fights, then devolves completely into goofiest Angel moments - at which point the man himself walks into the lobby, but he actually smiles to see them leaning into laughter against each other, which is pretty goofy itself. She’d thought the weirdest would be with Wes, because they knew younger, more unformed versions of each other, but it’s actually very comforting and Giles-y to sit with him, even though she now knows via Angel about the leather pants. 

Whatever the reason, it’s working, and it’s simple, comfortable, completely unremarkable, for Buffy to snuggle herself against Angel’s side in their big shared armchair as everyone bickers over what to watch for movie night.

“This is all just going to end up with us watching The Lion King again,” Angel informs her, his voice soft in her ear. “Even when we aren’t limited to a PG rating, no one can ever agree on anything.” He sounds so settled, full of affection for all of them.

“So you’re not planning on putting your foot down and telling us that movies haven’t been any good since they started with that all darn talking? That part where you’re the boss guy is just for the business cards?” she teases, and he laughs.

The sound doesn’t interrupt the argument at all, currently featuring Gunn and Cordy on one side and Wes and Fred debating on the other though that is sure to change within moments. Angel laughs enough these days that it probably isn’t notable to anyone but Buffy. Except that Connor looks up from where he is sitting cross-legged on the floor deciding which of his Halloween candy from earlier in the week he should eat tonight. Buffy pretends not to notice the way he tilts his head and stares hard at them, Angel first, then her, then swiftly back again, as if his father might stop laughing at any moment before he’s had a chance to examine it thoroughly. But instead Angel, smile still shimmering on his mouth, leans over to say something, and Connor, brow furrowed, looks back down at his pile of candy again.

* * *

Angel had gotten his soul bound four years ago, just post Sunnydale cratering. Back in Connor's infant days there had been a showdown with all the people who were suddenly in the babynapping business - there had been a portal involved, which was almost always bad news in Buffy's experience, but which had actually turned into another score for the good guys thanks to Willow’s intervention. As things had settled down, though, it had started becoming clear that what had been the minor, back-of-mind, would-be-nice-but-not-holding-my-breath issue of getting rid of the perfect happiness loophole was now much more urgent. The grounding sorts of thoughts of Connor aging and eventually dying while Angel remained eternally young, of Connor living a life of increased danger because of who his father was, the constant reminder never to be too happy because of what it might bring...it all became too precarious when placed alongside Connor’s first smiles and steps and words, all the tiny experiences of watching him grow. It was too dangerous, foolishly dangerous, to think that there might never be a moment when Connor would look up at Angel and smile and call him Daddy, and everything else would fade for just that second, just enough time to doom them all.

So there had been research and trials and messengers to talk to, times when the whole thing seemed impossible or as if it would come too late or not at all. Until it finally happened.

He had called her the evening after the ritual was completed, voice quiet over the phone; he said Connor had fallen asleep in his bed. While she swiped down the countertop of her apartment in Rome (was it all automatically Italian marble just for being in the country?) they’d talked about those times when everything changed but nothing looked different.

“I don’t think Connor even knows anything happened,” Angel said, not quite containing the confusion of chagrin and pride in his voice.

“Hey, he’ll probably notice that you’re all born-again glowy as soon as he wakes up tomorrow,” Buffy assured him cheerfully. “Although nighttime is actually probably better for that, so you might be down to zero on luck for the day.”

“Somehow,” he’d said, “I think I still have some to spare.”

He didn’t ask her to come, not then, and she didn’t offer, although she had already gotten over the resentment she’d felt when he’d first mentioned the idea to her. It wasn't about the measurement of his love for her as opposed to Connor, or that he hadn’t even tried to come up with a way to stay with her. Knowing that he would be leaving Sunnydale, leaving her, had made her feel as if everything was ending, but leaving his son, giving him up or giving up on him, would be something else entirely. He had left and she had survived it, maybe even grown from it, but now she had more growing to do, a different kind, and she wasn’t ready to go back to him yet.

It did make everything different, almost sensorially so, as if she could taste the change on her tongue or notice the subtle shifts in the morning sunlight around her. It was as if the molecules of the whole world have changed from this one thing thousands of miles away. It made it all feel different, the choice of it, knowing that she could come back now and not be afraid.

* * *

Connor’s bedroom is next door to Angel’s (now probably more accurately Buffy and Angel’s, which is strange and kind of wonderful, although it would be more wonderful if Angel either quit using big, Angel-sized globs of her body wash in the shower or bought his own bottle if he thinks it smells so good). Connor’s room is stacked with basically every toy and game and gadget you could possibly buy for a six year old. Cordelia claims to have had at least seventeen putting-her-foot-down talks with Angel about the dangers of spoiling a kid, and Buffy can only hope that the inevitable number eighteen will have the tiniest bit of effect because the others clearly haven’t.

Considering the local branch of Toys R Us next door, Buffy is surprised to enter her room one day to find Connor sitting on the floor beside the bookshelf, paging through not one of Angel’s books but the Sunnydale High class of 1999 yearbook.

(Well, the part about Angel's books isn’t overly surprising. As far as she’s concerned, his preferred reading material is most useful when thrown as weapon or distraction, or possibly used as a sleep aid, and she has the feeling Connor would agree if he at any point wanted to be found agreeing with her about anything.)

“See anything interesting?” she asks, thinking of Angel and trying not to sound accusatory, even though she didn’t exactly invite anyone to look through her stuff.

“You’re not in here,” he says, clearly either having missed the “not accusatory” memo, or having gotten it, made a paper airplane of it, and tossed it away. "I found Cordy, but there's no picture of you by your name."

"Oh. Right." Buffy shakes her head a little, focusing on his words rather than the fact that he’s willingly asking her the question at all. The high school drama is so distant she can barely remember the details. Well, that isn't precisely true. "It's a long story. Long Cordy related story, actually, that I’ll be happy to tell you some other time. But if you want to see a back in my day picture, here."

She takes a framed photo from the top of the bookcase. There hadn’t been time or room to tuck all of those carefully curated albums her mother had made into the back of the bus, and she hadn’t cared for the most part that there was no longer any record of her brief attempts at ballet or the first time she’d ridden a bike by herself. But already, only two years after she’d died, it had been a struggle for Buffy to recall the sound of her mother’s voice; the thought of having nothing to remind her of her mother’s face, the shade and curl of her hair, that not-quite smile she wore even when she wasn’t trying, had been too much. The pictures she and Dawn had grabbed on their way out of Sunnydale are probably not the best they ever took, and they had spent years without a permanent home until now, but one of the first things she did as she’d settled in at the Hyperion was to go out and buy frames for the room.

Connor studies the younger version of her. "That's your mom with you?"

"Yeah." She swallows. "It is." For all that they are simple, scabbed-over fact, the words feel terribly tender.

"Is she going to come to visit you?"

"No. She died a few years ago."

"Oh. How come?"

"She got sick."

"My mom died also, " he offers. "Just when I was being born. But my dad says that it’s okay, because she wanted me to be alive."

"Moms can be pretty good at that kind of stuff, I guess."

"Do you have a dad still?"

"I do. He lives here, actually." He looks around with automatic suspicion, as if some stranger might have been in the hotel this whole time, hiding uninvited in some corner of his domain. She holds back a laugh, suspecting that they might not be quite at the shared joke stage yet. "I mean in LA. "

"Oh. Well, is _he_ going to visit you?”

“Probably not,” Buffy says, more rueful than fed up with the questions. “We stopped talking a pretty long time ago. A lot of stuff happened in my life, and he didn’t really understand it or want to hear about it.”

Connor crosses his arms over his belly and pushes to keep his voice serious instead of sad. ”I don't want that to happen with my dad and me.” For the first time, Buffy sees Angel in him, in that containment and the way his real emotions could be found in his eyes. She isn’t sure that Angel would like that to be the legacy his son gains from him.

Looking back up at her, young and curious again, Connor asks, “You knew my dad a long time ago, didn't you? Before me and before my mom.”

Buffy warbles a little laugh, unsure exactly how much Angel has shared about his past with Darla. “How important are timelines really?” she asks, almost about to launch into a ‘hey, who wants ice cream?!’ bit, before she notices the way he picks nervously at his fingers as he waits for her answer. And she begins to suspect that it isn’t about dates and details, but more the worry that there might be only so much room in a heart and it might run out before your turn.

She lowers to a careful crouch and looks into his face, but doesn’t take his hand. “Look,” she says, “your dad loves you so much. And it doesn't matter who he knew for longer, or what happens with him and me. He's always going to be there for you.”

“How do you know?” he says, immediate and stubborn. It actually makes her smile. She thinks she might have once responded the same way.

“He's pretty easy to understand when you've known him as long as I have. Plus he got you a Wii. He never got me one of those, so it’s pretty obvious that he loves you a lot.”

“Well,” Conner offers, delicate as any first grader has ever been. “The Wii is a new thing and you're sort of old, a little bit. I don't think they had them for a lot of years that my dad knew you. So maybe that’s why.”

“You know, you might be onto something,” Buffy replies. Despite herself, she laughs, and looking like he’s doing it despite himself as well, Connor does too.

* * *

When he comes home from school the next day, Connor not only looks directly at Buffy, he does it with his eye-daggers safely in their sheathes. The day after, he says hi to her unprompted and without surliness, and the next weekend, he tells her that he knows she liked the oatmeal cookies he and Fred baked together because she ate them the most, so she can have the last one too if she wants.

That night, while Angel puts Connor to bed before he and Buffy go patrolling, Cordelia follows Buffy out the door into the night air.

“I don’t care that you’ve fought the world’s biggest, hairiest monsters,” Cordy says without preamble. “If you hurt him, I’ll kill you.” Her words come out with perfect posture.

“You think I’ll hurt Angel?” Buffy says, still bent partway over in a stretch with her leg on the ledge by the fountain.

“Oh, I know you’ll hurt Angel,” Cordy says, _inevitable, duh_ underlying her tone. “I’ve been around for too many sequels of the two of you not to be ready for that. And he’ll probably hurt you back - the man’s never remembered an anniversary, and you have way too many anyway. You guys will be fine. But Connor—” She takes one step toward Buffy. “He didn’t ask to be brought into your drama, and his life is already weird enough. Hurt him and die.”

Threat delivered, she opens the door to go back inside the hotel.

“What if we end up as best friends instead?” Buffy calls after her, even though a month ago she never would have even been able to consider the words without being hit by some cosmic impossibility ray. “What happens then?”

“You don’t even know what his five favorite action figures are,” Cordelia snorts. “Maybe I’ll be an inch closer to worried about that then.” The door closes behind her.

To her own surprise, Buffy can name at least the top three. She decides not to mention it to Cordy.

* * *

Bedtime is meant to be unmovable Angel and Connor time, but demons don’t exactly pay attention to those kinds of schedules. Gunn is the one who picks up the phone down in the lobby, “Angel Investigations, we—” cut off by a man’s shrieking description of “fangs and tentacles and fangs on the tentacles.” He hands the phone to Wes, who adjusts his glasses and starts trying to get more specific information, while Buffy goes upstairs to tell Angel that his quiet evening isn’t so much anymore.

She stops outside of Connor’s door, not quite ready to interrupt the moment as she hears Angel’s voice saying, “And who should we think about tonight?” It’s not exactly praying, but she wonders how consciously Angel thinks about the things he is choosing to keep and pass on from his childhood and what he’s decided to leave behind.

“Me and you and Cordy and Wes and Fred and Gunn,” Connor says, a practiced, singsong rush. “And Miss Annie because she let me use the new markers first when she opened them and Amy and JJ because they helped me clean up in the block corner and Oscar because he told me that I’m the smartest in spelling.” He thinks, then adds, “And Maya because even though she thinks she’s the best in spelling, she says that her family is going to Disney Land and maybe I can come too. And I think Buffy also, a little bit, probably.”

“Sounds like a good list,” says Angel in a cozy, rumbly sort of way that sounds like he is pushing his face away from smiling.

“Can I ask my question now?”

It has the air of routine to it, but Buffy doesn’t think she is imagining the pause, the braced, cautious sound of Angel’s voice, as if he doesn’t have to push the smile away anymore because it went on its own. “What would you like to know?”

“Does being a vampire make you sad?”

The pause is a bit longer this time, long enough that Buffy almost picks up her hand to knock as if she has just arrived with her urgent message. She and Angel don’t really have secrets at this point; she is fairly certain that if she had asked the question, he would tell her too. But they are adults and Connor is a child and he is able to ask the sorts of questions that would make her feel silly for bringing up something so simple, even if she finds herself wanting to know too.

Angel’s answer, when it finally comes, seems considered but not necessarily burdened. “Being a vampire means that there are things that I can’t do. I wish I could bring you to school in the morning and come to your soccer games, and it does make me sad that I can’t do things like that. But there are also things that I can do that I wouldn’t be able to if I wasn’t a vampire. I was able to live long enough to have you and find Buffy and meet all of our friends. I’m strong and fast and I’ve learned a lot so I can do my job and protect people. So I think sometimes it’s something I’m sad about and sometimes it’s something that’s helped me, but mostly it’s just what is.”

“Do you think you will ever stop being a vampire?” There’s a yawn at the end of Connor’s new question, but he seems awake enough to wait out the answer. Buffy guesses that this means that Angel has never said anything about prophecies, about perhaps one day living to die. She gets it. The tease of it is hard enough for her, and she’s a grownup who’s made her own choices.

“I hope I will someday,” Angel says, nearly a whisper. “I hope it’s soon enough.”

“Me too.” Connor’s definitely sleepy now, starting to drift. “Because rainbows are pretty and you can’t see them in the nighttime. So I’ll make you a picture of a rainbow until you can see one for your own self.”

“That sounds perfect,” Angel tells him softly, and Buffy kind of thinks it does.

* * *

Angel is an expert at eggs and Buffy has quickly familiarized herself with the delivery options in the area, but neither of those skills exactly mean much in the “balanced diet for a growing kid” department.

“You can’t expect him to survive on cereal and Gunn Surprise until he turns eighteen,” Cordelia tells Angel one evening. 

“Hey,” Gunn calls from where he’s sitting behind the reception desk. “You haven’t exactly been jumping in to prove that you’re top chef over here.”

Cordy ignores him. “Spaghetti and meatballs,” she continues, “even you can handle that,” as if she is already a proven handler of such things.

“Of course we can,” Buffy says, coming to stand beside Angel to save him from being alone on the end of Cordy’s look. “Completely pastable.”

They start off their trip to the grocery store with a short, firm list, but Angel is apparently the kind of squishy-soft parent who adds his kid’s favorite snacks to the cart without being begged for them, even though he looks guilty as he does it. Buffy takes the opportunity to add in her own “back in the US of A” favorites. As Angel drives them home, she looks at the cluster of bags, out of place and exactly home in the leather backseat that Angel insists is “classic.” She finds herself smiling without knowing entirely why.

Once in the kitchen, their elbows rest against each other on the counter as they peer together at the recipe. Ingredients added dubiously to the bowl, Angel determinedly mushes meat while Buffy tries her hand at chopping mushrooms for the sauce. 

“I slice and dice demons for a living,” she says petulantly, holding one up to glare at it. Her attempts so far have come out quite a bit more unevenly than she was hoping. “How come these little guys are causing so much trouble?” She twirls the kitchen knife she’d found over in her fingers.

Wiping his hands on a towel, Angel leans over her shoulder to examine her pile. “I think you left your sword in the umbrella stand in the lobby. I can get that if you think it’ll help,” he offers.

She stretches over to kiss his cheek. “You’re sweet, for a mushroom slicing stickler. How about instead you can be the one to deal with the onion?”

It sits round and innocent on the counter. Angel eyes its crinkly, layered skin warily. “How much would you say you can usually taste onion in your spaghetti sauce?” he asks.

No one is exactly going to name them cooking champions of the world - Angel’s sense of smell allowed him to figure out when the meatballs were cooked fully in the middle and Buffy’s wonky mushrooms are pretty well concealed, but the sauce is a little watery (plus it probably could have used the onion) and Fred quickly hides her crestfallen look with a smile when she realizes that they forgot to make garlic bread. But they sit together around one table and laugh and nearly everyone gets tomato stains somewhere as they listen to Connor tell them all about school between illicitly slurped noodles and Buffy doesn’t think any kind of award could be quite like that.

* * *

She ends up climbing the stairs beside Connor later that night. As they reach the landing, he looks over and tells her, “I think you make my dad happy.”

“I think I do too,” she says honestly. “Which is nice, because he makes me happy too.”

“I know that for a lot of years he was not happy.” He crosses his arms and narrows his eyes. “So it would be very bad if he had to stop being happy because you maybe went away.”

There is a whole world out there and she has had a chance to love so much of it. Now she spends all her time in a formerly haunted hotel that never exactly got the HGTV overhaul it deserves alongside her one-time high school nemesis, Giles II: Even Gilesier, inner city live action Robin Hood, and a formerly cave-dwelling genius, not to mention the extremely complicated love of her life, plus his son.

“Maybe you’ll like this, Connor, and maybe you won’t,” she says, “but I’m not planning on going anywhere.

* * *

“Buffy,” Connor asks politely. He is balanced on a stool pulled up to the reception counter with his feet swinging. “Can you help me with my homework?”

“Sure,” she says, setting down the stack of paper she’d printed out. The latest version of the manuscript Dawn is working on hasn't improved much from the immediate previous one and Buffy is glad for a break. She slides from the red leather of the big doughnut chair where she and Angel had been sitting together, but he grabs her hand before she can walk over. 

"Hey," he says, softly enough that she bends a bit closer to hear. "This is all I've ever wanted, you know. The two of you together and okay. I—You didn't have to put in the work for it. I'm grateful that you did."

She glances over at Connor, scowly and sneaky and smart, protective of his family, uncaring about what anyone else thinks. An impossibility, the subject of a foiled prophecy, a warrior in waiting, a perfectly average kid.

"You're worth it," she tells Angel. "And so is he."

She crosses the lobby, thankful that Connor’s class is still working on addition and subtraction. When they get up to long division, Buffy is sure to make quite the fool of herself. Something to look forward to, she guesses.

**Author's Note:**

> The first idea I had for this year's IWRY, and it took the longest to write! Another one of my "things went differently because Buffy and Angel talked" fics, but with a juvenile obstacle.
> 
> (Fun fact that I'll probably forget if I don't note it somewhere: the original title that I came up with after agonizing for approx 20,000 years was "build the foundations, unlikely and strong" but I decided to switch it over after I got some Shower Inspiration 24 hours later.)


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